Benji Radach completes comeback to the big time at "EliteXC: Heat"

Twenty-eight months is a long time to think about what could have been.

But that's exactly what American Top Team's Benji Radach (18-4) did after a 2004 loss to Chris Leben.

"A lot of it was just sitting around all that time wanting to get back to [MMA]," Radach recently told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "I was real hungry the whole time. I was injured -- one surgery after another. It was such a down period of time."

After suffering just one defeat in his first 15 bouts, including three appearances for the UFC, Radach dropped two straight fights and fell into obscurity. But the 29-year-old said he never lost faith his day would come again.

"I knew that I'd come out on top at some point," Radach said. "Things started clearing up for me. I went out to American Top Team and started training full time out there. Thanks to Dan Lambert and Ricardo Liborio I got back on my feet."